


Trading Heroes for Ghosts

by jujitsuelf



Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Original Character POV, Prompt Fill, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujitsuelf/pseuds/jujitsuelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill for - Any, Any, Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trading Heroes for Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer – All publicly recognizable characters, settings etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended
> 
> Prompt left by lannamichaels at fic_promptly
> 
> ***
> 
> This is a bit more random than I intended but somehow Richardson walked into my head and started telling about what he thinks of the Losers

Corporal Matthew Richardson was twenty four when he met the men who would go on to become his heroes. The Losers were already moving into army legend by the time he made it through his own Spec Ops training.

They swaggered into the mess, each and every one of them beaten up, bruised and slightly broken after their latest mission from hell.

Every mission they got seemed to be the ‘from hell’ type. Richardson suspected the brass reserved those ops for the men they knew could handle them. If anyone could handle everything going completely and utterly FUBAR, it was Franklin Clay and his merry band of miscreants.

Richardson tried not to stare but half of the mess was doing so openly. The Losers tended to attract attention wherever they went. Their reputations preceded them by a mile.

Clay and Roque were known, probably rightly, as the baddest of bad-ass motherfuckers. One glance from Roque had most men looking quickly down at their plates. Clay was slightly less intimidating but Richardson knew he had to be quite an officer to control a team like his.

Pooch was the most normal of all of them. Well, ‘normal’ was pushing it. Rumor had it Pooch was something of a machine-whisperer. Even out in the field, wounded and with bullets flying past his ears, he could coax life out of the oldest, most decrepit engines. He was also the team’s heavy weapons guy. In short, definitely a man to be on good terms with.

Richardson didn’t really know whether to believe most of what he heard about Jensen. Apparently the guy had hacked into NASA when he was sixteen. How and why he ended up in the army and not working as a computer technician for the CIA was something of a mystery. Jensen talked a hell of a lot but very rarely said anything about himself. Some guys said they’d seen mission reports which mentioned Jensen taking down arms dealers’ security systems with one hand and fighting said arms dealers off with the other. Whether it was true or not, nobody seemed entirely sure. Jensen didn’t look like a classic soldier, not with the mad blond hair and Lennon glasses, but he had to be something special to command a place on a team like the Losers.

Last but very definitely not least was Cougar. Cougar was a mystery and seemed very happy to remain that way. Nobody knew where he was from, how old he was or what he’d done to end up as Clay’s regular sniper. All anyone knew, or was willing to say, was that he never missed. Just how he got to be so good, nobody knew and as yet no-one had summoned up the courage to ask him. While not unfriendly, Cougar liked to keep himself to himself and rarely spoke to anyone outside his team. He seemed to have some kind of special relationship with Jensen, the two of the spent more time with each other than with anyone else. Maybe Jensen’s babble and Cougar’s silence cancelled each other out.

Richardson knew some of the younger guys regarded Cougar as some kind of mythical figure, worthy of hero worship. Whether Cougar approved of that or not, he didn’t know.

It was easy to dismiss the Losers as the rag-tag leavings of the army, men incapable of working with anyone else, forced to work with one another as a last ditch effort to save their careers. But Richardson watched their easy camaraderie, cheerful banter and good-natured insults and knew they weren’t the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel, they were the elite.

The day Richardson heard that the Losers had been killed in a helicopter crash in South America, it felt like a little piece fell out of the bottom of his world. The Losers were invincible, men leading charmed lives, not as susceptible to the cold hand of death as the rest of them. They couldn’t be dead, it just wasn’t possible. Then news filtered down that they’d been implicated in the deaths of Bolivian nationals, civilians, even children. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Richardson went about his duties that day with a very heavy heart. Losing heroes was one thing. At least if he’d been allowed to think of them as good men who died doing their duty, it might not have hurt quite so much. Tarnishing their memories made everything more painful. The Losers weren’t heroes anymore, now they were just ghosts.

But all the same, Richardson liked to think he’d known the five of them well enough to be able to say with a fair amount of certainty that they hadn’t killed anyone they weren’t supposed to kill. Maybe one day there’d be some evidence to clear their names. Richardson hoped so.


End file.
